Marc J. Dunkelman, author of "Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — and How to Bring It Back," stops by the studio to talk to Lovett about how Democrats — once they regain power — can make government work again. Together they dive into the ways progressive governance changed from the New Deal to today, the influence of Robert Caro's polemic "The Power Broker" on a generation of public employees, and why they're both hopeful that Democrats will be able to find their way out of the darkness and learn to do big things again.
Up First from NPR - Women in the Skilled Trades Face New Hurdles
President Trump has a vision for the American workforce. Forget expensive college educations. His eye is on the skilled trades. The U.S. Department of Labor has adopted the slogan “Make America Skilled Again.”
But who gets to be part of this renaissance?
Since the 1980s, women have made small but meaningful gains in the construction trades. Now there are concerns that President Trump’s campaign to end diversity, equity and inclusion will stall that progress — setting back both women and the construction industry.
Today on the Sunday Story, we ask how women fit into this administration’s vision of this skilled trades future.
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What Next | Daily News and Analysis - Why Dictators Take Out the Internet
The Iranian government cut off nearly all internet access on January 8 as part of a crackdown on protestors, an example of why authoritarians attempt internet blackouts—and why they don’t always work the way authoritarians want them to.
Guest: Steve Feldstein, political scientist and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.
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Engines of Our Ingenuity - The Engines of Our Ingenuity 1518: Looking for Reality
Episode: 1518 A concern about computers and the redefinition of reality. Today, we try to tell fact from fiction.
The World in Brief from The Economist - Iran says America is exploiting unrest; Israel strikes Gaza, and more
Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, said she would propose an “amnesty law” covering the period since 1999—when Hugo Chávez, self-styled leader of the “Bolivarian revolution”, came to power
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It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: Mutual Aid by Dean Spade, Part One
Margaret reads you excerpts from a book explaining the ins and outs of mutual aid.
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array(3) { [0]=> string(184) "https://www.omnycontent.com/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/78d30acb-8463-4c40-a5ae-ae2d0145c9ff/fbfff4f9-68b8-4dbb-9eb4-b3e40023aed3/image.jpg?t=1769915649&size=Large" [1]=> string(10) "image/jpeg" [2]=> int(0) }Global News Podcast - Britain’s former prince Andrew faces fresh allegations
A second woman has alleged she was sent to Britain by the late sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, to have sex with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor who has always denied wrongdoing. Also: there are explosions in Iran amid heightened tensions; a US federal judge allows ICE to continue the immigration crackdown in Minnesota; Pakistan's army kills rebels in Balochistan province; European and non-English movies gain momentum ahead of the Oscars; the ethics of AI creating life; and do dogs need clothing?
The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight.
Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment.
Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk
Lex Fridman Podcast - #490 – State of AI in 2026: LLMs, Coding, Scaling Laws, China, Agents, GPUs, AGI
Nathan Lambert and Sebastian Raschka are machine learning researchers, engineers, and educators. Nathan is the post-training lead at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) and the author of The RLHF Book. Sebastian Raschka is the author of Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch) and Build a Reasoning Model (From Scratch).
Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep490-sc
See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc.
Transcript:
https://lexfridman.com/ai-sota-2026-transcript
CONTACT LEX:
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OUTLINE:
(00:00) – Introduction
(01:39) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections
(16:29) – China vs US: Who wins the AI race?
(25:11) – ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini vs Grok: Who is winning?
(36:11) – Best AI for coding
(43:02) – Open Source vs Closed Source LLMs
(54:41) – Transformers: Evolution of LLMs since 2019
(1:02:38) – AI Scaling Laws: Are they dead or still holding?
(1:18:45) – How AI is trained: Pre-training, Mid-training, and Post-training
(1:51:51) – Post-training explained: Exciting new research directions in LLMs
(2:12:43) – Advice for beginners on how to get into AI development & research
(2:35:36) – Work culture in AI (72+ hour weeks)
(2:39:22) – Silicon Valley bubble
(2:43:19) – Text diffusion models and other new research directions
(2:49:01) – Tool use
(2:53:17) – Continual learning
(2:58:39) – Long context
(3:04:54) – Robotics
(3:14:04) – Timeline to AGI
(3:21:20) – Will AI replace programmers?
(3:39:51) – Is the dream of AGI dying?
(3:46:40) – How AI will make money?
(3:51:02) – Big acquisitions in 2026
(3:55:34) – Future of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI, Meta
(4:08:08) – Manhattan Project for AI
(4:14:42) – Future of NVIDIA, GPUs, and AI compute clusters
(4:22:48) – Future of human civilization
Newshour - Doubts over next round of Ukraine peace talks
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that US-mediated talks planned to take place in Abu Dhabi on Sunday may be delayed. In his Sunday. Zelensky said Kyiv was prepared to work on peace plans and that Kyiv was preparing for them to take place next week. His remarks came as Ukraine faced rolling power cuts amid freezing temperatures.
Also on the programme: the renowned Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei tells us about his first return to China in ten years; and new evidence about the world’s earliest pandemic, the Plague of Justinian.
PICTURE: President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv, Ukraine January 16, 2026 CREDIT:REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo
Audio Poem of the Day - I Have Slept in Many Places
By Denise Duhamel
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